Communications for Volunteers

Introduction

This is not a marketing textbook. You won’t find any marketing theory in here or any discussions of complex strategies. What you will find are some simple, straightforward, low-cost ways for community groups and other volunteer organisations to maximise their communications, both with their members and the general public.

I’ve been involved with many community groups over the years, from sports clubs to community bands, theatre groups and choirs, to church councils and social justice organisations. I love volunteering and I’m one of those people who always seems to end up on committees. Since you’re reading this, you probably are too. But what I’ve found is that most community groups tend to lack or only have a basic understanding of communications and marketing strategies. This isn’t really surprising, because many of the people who serve on volunteer committees have no background in communications and marketing. However, with the rise of the web and social media, community groups are now operating in a much bigger space, and having at least a basic online and social media presence is now essential. The general public also expects a higher standard of professionalism in communications from community groups than in the past. So what are volunteer committees with limited time and often limited skills to do? Providing some solutions to this problem is why I wrote this book.

There are a few different ways you can use this book. You can read it start to finish, working through developing a communications strategy in Part 1 and then using the specific tools in Part 2 to put it into practice. Or you can dip in and out of the book, just looking at the sections that are most relevant to your organisation.

That said, one of the most common mistakes that I see in my role as a communications consultant—not just from community groups but from companies and other organisations as well—is communication without a defined purpose. Most people and organisations think about their communications method or medium without ever thinking strategically about their audience or message. This means that they feel they have to have a presence everywhere: on multiple social media networks, on the web and in the traditional media. But because this presence is so wide, it’s often spread too thinly and is poorly maintained. Developing a communications strategy will allow you to better target your efforts and save you time and energy. It will ensure that you’re only active in the places where you’re most likely to reach your audience, rather than trying to be all things to all people. And developing a communications strategy isn’t hard: mostly, it's about answering a series of targeted questions, which will give you a better insight into what you want to achieve with your organisation. There’s even a series of handy templates at the end of this book that lays out all of these questions for you, and real-life case studies throughout that highlight different aspects of communications, as well as a glossary of specialised terms.

The main emphasis of this book is on things that volunteers in community groups can do themselves with little or no training. Many of the tools discussed here are free or low-cost. However, there will be times when you need to hire professionals, and this book will also give you guidance on how best to spend a limited publicity budget.

This Venn diagram shows the basics of project management. Its three main variables are quality, cost and time. When you’re planning a specific project, you can usually achieve two of these variables, but getting all three—a high-quality product quickly and cheaply—is impossible. What this means for community organisations is that sometimes you’ll need to pay for quality or speed. There are many areas where community groups can produce their own work, but getting professional services for things like graphic design, photography, copywriting or editing can make all the difference to the quality of the final product. At the back of this book is a flowchart that will help you decide when to hire a professional, as well as a list of communications-related professions and descriptions of what they do. These include designers, copywriters, editors, photographers and social media specialists. This list will help you select the right person for the job should you need to hire a professional.

So, where do we start? The best place to begin is with a communications strategy.

PART 1 – COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGIES

What is a communications strategy and why do you need one?

Once upon a time, community groups were exactly that: they served the people and communities in their immediate vicinity. Nowadays, however, many community groups draw their membership from a much wider base. People are more inclined to seek out specific interest groups based on factors other than just location, and community groups now have to prove to potential members why these people should choose them.

So what does this mean in practice? Well, it means that community organisations really need to have a communications strategy.

I like to think of it like archery. If you were at an archery range, you wouldn’t just shoot arrows here, there and everywhere and hope that one of them hits the target. It’s time-consuming and uses a lot of resources for not much return (you might fire twenty arrows but only get one hit). Rather, you’d aim very carefully and do your best to ensure that every single arrow hits the target.

It’s the same with communications. Many organisations throw out lots of different ideas and feel that they have to have a presence in a lot of different places. This scattergun approach means their communications often don’t reach the people they really need to target, and they end up spending a lot of energy and resources for not much return. At worst, this can lead to burnout of your volunteers (because you’re asking them to do a lot of essentially useless work), and spending money—which many community groups don’t have much of—on disconnected strategies that don’t work.

So what does a communications strategy involve?

The good news is it isn’t as scary as it sounds. A communications strategy is, in its most basic form, a list of questions that gets you thinking about who your audience is, what message you want to send to them, and how best you can reach them. It doesn’t have to be filled with marketing jargon—it’s a simple, straightforward analytical tool. The next three chapters will take you through step-by-step processes for developing three different types of communications strategy, using the templates provided in Appendix A: External Communications Strategy, Appendix B: Internal Communications Strategy, and Appendix C: Social Media Strategy, but first we need to look at the different types of communications.

External and internal communications

Most community groups will need to engage in two types of communication. External communication is anything intended for an outside audience. For music or theatre groups, it could be the people you want to come and see your productions; for sports groups, it could be your fans; and for social justice groups it could be the people you want to get involved in your cause or to access your services.

The way you reach these people will depend on who they are and what your aim is, and we’ll go into this in more detail when we map out a communications plan. But, broadly speaking, there are four major ways you can reach your external audience:

Online presence (e.g. website, possibly including an email list)

Traditional media (e.g. radio, television and newspapers)

Social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat etc.)

Physical or ‘real-world’ publicity (e.g. events, posters, fliers)

You don’t necessarily have to use all these methods, although a good website these days is really non-negotiable. Both traditional and social media have two aspects: free and paid. In both cases, you can get free exposure through articles or posts, or you can pay for advertising. Chapter 6 looks at how to engage with the traditional media, while Chapter 7 covers social media in a lot more detail, including the advantages and disadvantages of paid advertising. Chapter 4 gives an overview of events and physical publicity materials.

Internal communication is anything intended for your members. For religious organisations, these are parishioners; for music and sports groups they’re the people who make up your choir or your sports team. For social justice groups they’re the people who run your activities. In almost all community organisations, these are also the people from whom the governing committee or body is drawn.

Many organisations make the mistake of neglecting internal communications, and as a result members often feel like they’ve been forgotten or that they don’t know what’s going on in their group. The other mistake organisations make is to think that internal communications is purely one-way: missives from the governing body down to the members. In fact, the best internal communications strategies map out two-way avenues of communication. For leaders of community groups, it’s important not just to tell members about what’s going on, but also to have channels for listening to their concerns and ideas.

Some effective internal communications channels include:

Email newsletters (from the governing body to members; email can also be used as a way for members to contact the leadership)

Regular social events (where members get to know each other and the group’s leadership team and relationships are strengthened)

Surveys (so the leadership can find out what members think; these are easily conducted online)

Social media (especially closed groups on Facebook)

When thinking about internal communications, it’s vital that the leadership team doesn’t neglect face-to-face connections. It can be tempting to do it all by email, but there’s really no substitute for strong interpersonal relationships and good governance practices. These are vital in any workplace, but particularly for groups that are run by volunteers, because if those people aren’t feeling valued and satisfied then they have no other incentive (such as a salary) to stay on, and poor word-of-mouth can lead to serious reputational damage for the organisation.

The other important thing to remember is that, in general, you need to communicate around three times as much as you think you do. This is particularly true if your organisation is going through a difficult time or is working on a major project, such as fundraising.

You’ve probably noticed that social media is a useful tool for both external and internal communications. For this reason, I’d recommend that, if you’ve identified social media as a big part of your communications strategy, you draw up a separate social media strategy as well, using the template in Appendix C.

Chapter 1

External Communications Strategy

Many groups—not just community organisations, but businesses as well—make the mistake of ignoring the ‘strategic’ part of communications and rushing straight into the nuts and bolts of communicating. However, if you don’t take the time to plan your communications—essentially asking yourself who you’re communicating with and why—you’ll end up wasting a lot of time and effort on ineffective strategies. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to develop a simple yet comprehensive external communications plan.

1.1. Developing an external communications strategy

This chapter will take you through the external communications strategy template in Appendix A, explaining the different sections and how to optimise your answers to get the best results.

The most important thing to remember is to be as specific as you can. The more general your answers, the less effective your strategy.

Step 1: Identify your purpose

Why do we want to communicate with people? What are we aiming to achieve?

One of the biggest mistakes organisations make is to rush straight to the end of the communications process—identifying messages and media—without asking why they want to communicate with people in the first place. For most community groups, the answer to this question will be a variation of ‘Because we want people to get involved with us,’ but it’s worth interrogating that statement a bit more to really figure out why you’re communicating. For example, do you want to entertain people, or give them information about a particular issue or event, or affect policy outcomes, or promote social change?

The basic rule of thumb is that all communication should be either a) entertaining; b) useful; or c) both. You either need to be entertaining people, telling them about something they didn’t know before or solving a problem for them.

Once you’ve identified your reasons for communicating, you can move on to look at who you want to be communicating with.

Step 2: Identify your audience(s)

What are the demographics of the people we are trying to reach?

Whom you’re trying to reach will have a huge impact on the communication methods you use, and choosing the wrong channel for your audience will mean your message doesn’t reach the people you want it to. It’s possible—indeed, likely—that you’ll have more than one audience, so in this section make sure you give a separate set of answers for each audience you identify. The aim of this question is to build up a broad picture of your ideal customers. Once you understand who they are and what they like to do, you’ll be able to figure out how best to reach out to them. Demographics regarding interests, cultural preferences and information consumption are more important than age or gender, unless your organisation is catering specifically to people of a particular age or gender.

Age. This is important if your organisation caters to people in a specific age group, such as children or the elderly.

Gender. This is important if your organisation caters to people of a particular gender, e.g. a men’s shed.

Location. Are you targeting people just within your local area, within a wider region, state or province, nationally or internationally?

Nationality/ethnicity. This is important for organisations that are targeting people from specific backgrounds, e.g. university clubs for international students.

Language. Do you need to present your information in multiple languages?

Interests/hobbies. This is one of the most important things to identify, as most community groups tend to be interest-based. What do these people like to do? Once you know that, you can start to figure out where they hang out and how to reach them.

Financial status. This is particularly important if your main goal is fundraising. You’ll need to decide if you’re seeking to target wealthier people who can give more money, or less-wealthy people who can be active in other ways. It’s also important for groups that are putting on shows or events that you’re charging people money to attend, because it will